January 18, 2012

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Glenn, no name please. I work for Congressman Tim Johnson. Just to let you know, we’re getting about a hundred emails an hour opposing SOPA. We were already opposed, but this certainly makes us feel that much better about our opposition.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Web Protests Piracy Bill And Senators Change Course. “Members of Congress, many of whom are grappling with the issues posed by the explosion in new media and social Web sites, appeared caught off guard by the enmity toward what had been a relatively obscure piece of legislation to many of them.”

MORE: A reader emails:

From the NYT Article:

“The problem for the content industry is they just don’t know how to mobilize people,” said John P. Feehery, a former Republican leadership aide and executive at the motion picture lobby. “They have a small group of content makers, a few unions, whereas the Internet world, the social media world especially, has a tremendous reach. They can reach people in ways we never dreamed of before.”

That’s not their problem at all. The problem for the content industry is that they have no people to mobilize. All they have is Hollywood cash and insider access. The number of flesh-and-blood, voting people they can bring to the table in support of SOPA and PIPA is trivial. The media companies, the ones that actually provide the services that people use on a daily basis… they’re the ones who have the people and the votes, and they didn’t need cash or insider access to make an impact today.

Cash and insider access do not get members of Congress re-elected. Votes do. Let this be an object lesson to Dodd, Feehery, and the whole corrupt, rent-seeking crowd at the MPAA.

(As an aside: …and to the “campaign finance reform” crowd who believes that cash = votes).